1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the updating of content in electronic documents.
2. Background
An increase in available content on the World Wide Web and innovations in Internet search technology have changed the way people access information. By searching the Web, a user can now perform a wide variety of research-based tasks such as planning a vacation, purchasing a car, or performing academic research. While finding sought-after information on the Web has generally become easier, collecting and organizing Web research and later coming back to it remains challenging. This is due, in part, to the fact that Web-based research sessions may last a long time, span multiple sessions, involve gathering large amounts of content, and change in focus over time as new topics of research emerge.
While performing research on the Web, users often need to painstakingly record the URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) associated with Web pages that they visit, the search terms that work best for them, and information from the destination pages they reach. Users may record such data in written form (e.g., by writing such data in a journal or on Post-it® notes) or in electronic form (e.g., by cutting and pasting such data into a word processing document), thereby creating impromptu research documents that may subsequently be used to explore their work in a particular area. Other conventional methods for collecting and organizing such data include saving bookmarks or tabs associated with Web pages, storing Web pages locally, or using basic scratchpad programs such as Google™ Notebook.
Each of these methods and tools require a user to proactively sort through, select and record information that is suitable for inclusion in a formal or informal Web research record. This can be a time-consuming, tedious and sometimes confusing task as the user navigates between different Web pages and browser windows. Performing such a task will inevitably slow down the research process and generally make it more unpleasant. In each case, the quality of the research record generated is directly related to the amount of effort expended by the user in meticulously recording URLs, search terms and Web content. Depending upon the medium used for recording and the level of effort expended by the user, the resulting research record may be messy and disorganized, thereby compromising its future usefulness. Furthermore, Web pages are frequently updated, and thus information copied from the Web into the research record may rapidly become out of date.
Furthermore, in some cases, it may desirable to collect attribution information for the sources of information obtained when performing research on the Web. Maintaining such attribution information may be particularly important when the research is to be used for academic purposes (e.g., a homework assignment, a journal paper, etc.), for a public presentation, and/or for other similar purposes. Attribution information may be listed in a bibliography section of a research document, for instance. Maintaining proper attribution information for information obtained from the Web may be inconvenient, however, because collecting attribution information may slow down research efforts. Furthermore, proper source attribution information is not always easy to ascertain, as documents are routinely copied from website to website on the Web without maintaining information regarding the original source.
What is needed then is a means for allowing users to maintain a record of research that avoids the shortcomings of the foregoing conventional approaches.